One Humanity, One Love

A prayer for peace at this holy season.
Let us all cultivate inner peace, which will then be reflected in the outer world as peace on earth.

Facing Personal Suffering

Here is a simple process to follow to awaken to your personal suffering, to experience it fully and to allow it to transform you into a wounded healer:

1. Identify a situation, a problem, an issue, a relationship, a challenge or stressor that triggers any emotional pain or charge for you.

2. List all the key words that describe what it is that you do not like about the situation, the person or the issue. What is it that you find most unacceptable? What are you resisting or rejecting? Allow yourself to be completely judgmental and blaming. Do not censor yourself. What is it that triggers or upsets you the most? At this stage in the process allow yourself to rant and rave as much as you want. But don't get stuck here !

3. When you are ready, let go of focusing on the outside situation for awhile and go inside to where you feel the impact of this issue in your bodily felt sensations. Allow yourself to simply attend to the energetic flow of emotional reactivity inside yourself without fighting it. What are the deep feelings stirred up in you by this outer circumstance? Take a moment to observe and notice the internal pain that comes up for you in response to this situation. Underneath your resistance to this situation, your rejection of the way it is, pay attention to and describe the layers of feelings - anger, fear and grief - that you would prefer not to be experiencing. Give yourself some space simply to acknowledge your inner experience without contracting against it.

4.Imagine for a moment that you are able to make complete peace with this situation without having to change or control anything about this situation or the persons involved. Imagine that you are able to completely accept and experience all your difficult, painful feelings about the situation without denying, suppressing or avoiding them, but simply by letting them be without resistance. What would life be like for you if you could simply allow yourself to experience your experience without struggling against it? Imagine that you are able to navigate this deep surrender to the way life is presently unfolding for you, and that it is safe to let yourself feel whatever is there.

5. Take a moment right now to invite into your awareness the difficult feelings you would prefer to avoid for all eternity and instead cultivate an unconditional acceptance of them as they are. Take a seat in the eye of the hurricane and allow all your unwanted feelings and bodily sensations to simply be as they are from moment to moment without fighting them in any way. Provide a compassionate holding environment for your inner experience. Let yourself be the way you are in the deepest possible way. Be deeply kind to yourself for a change. Stop the inner violence against your own human experience. Let yourself breathe and hold yourself with invincible tenderness. Notice both your suffering and your resistance to suffering. Hold it all with your Big Heart. As the feelings shift and integrate, pay attention to what you are being shown, what lessons you are learning, what wisdom you are gaining.

6. Ask the Divine from your heart for the grace and guidance to completely experience without resistance your unprocessed, undigested pain and thereby make peace with yourself, with others and with life as it is.

Being Peace : The Inner Skill of Not Taking It Personally

The key to remaining peaceful and non-reactive when others are behaving in ways you do not like is the inner skill of not taking it personally. Behaving non-reactively when you are triggered by another's actions comes from the cultivated ability to choose your response consciously, based on your vision of coming from compassion, rather than automatically and habitually reacting from anger or fear. Responding consciously rather than unconsciously requires that you move out of victim mentality or grievance mentality, in which you judge, blame and resent others for behaving the way they are, instead of the way you want them to.

There is no way to free yourself from victim or grievance mentality as long as you take it personally when others treat you in ways you do not like, when others somehow fail to meet your needs. Taking it personally makes it impossible to come from a place of detachment or compassion when the behavior of others displeases you. Taking it personally means that you believe that the way you are being treated indicates something bad about who you are, about your fundamental value or worth. Somehow the behavior of the other triggers unresolved issues concerning your own intrinsic goodness and worthiness to be loved. You are out of touch with your own inner wholeness and are dependent on the other to behave a certain way so that you can feel good about yourself.

This is what children do when they receive less-than-nurturing parenting. They internalize the hurtful behavior of their parents and blame themselves, concluding that there is something wrong with who they are, with their needs and feelings. They develop an unconscious self-hatred for being unable to get their needs met, for being human and vulnerable. The injury causes them to reject their own humanity, to judge themselves as somehow bad or wrong. A child is not able to see that their parent's behavior is not about them. Rather it is the parent's very human limitations, pain or woundedness that causes their unkind or negligent behavior. As the child matures it is possible for him or her to heal from the losses and unmet needs of childhood , to understand that any mistreatment or neglect he or she suffered was never about his or her fundamental goodness and worthiness. This healing process requires that the child integrate the experiences of childhood by completing the grieving process and releasing the layers of suppressed emotions - in order to accept one's own humanity and to forgive the humanity of one's parents.

So when people treat you in negligent or hurtful ways, you could practice seeing the lack of kindness as a symptom of their own inner tension and distress, and nothing to do with your fundamental goodness and worthiness to be treated well. This requires an ongoing commitment to be there for yourself when you are hurting inside, to give yourself empathy and to release your hurt and anger through the power of your own accepting loving presence, without giving in to the tendency to blame yourself or the other. There is a powerful psychospiritual principle at work here . Hatred never ceases through hatred but by love alone is healed.

Not taking it personally does not mean that you do not set healthy boundaries that honour your personal limits with people whose behavior is hurtful to you. It just means that you never have to throw people out of your heart, even if you decide not to have them in your life. It is always wise to be assertive in safeguarding your own wellbeing in relationship with others. Not taking it personally is not about being a doormat or allowing yourself to be exploited by others. Rather it is the internal reframing that you do to prevent yourself from blaming and judging others when their behavior is not to your liking. Mastering this ability to stay nonreactive allows the kind of deeper communication that can lead to conflict resolution.

The man who tailgates you and insults you as he passes in his car is simply acting out his own inner turmoil. He is unconsciously taking his pain out on you. Unloading his anguish and stress on you is his best attempt to reduce his tension and find some relief inside. If you take it personally, then you are allowing his emotional turmoil to enter your system and poison you. On the other hand, if you don't take it personally, you free yourself from the victim mentality, and you can send him a blessing of healing instead. You are being peace. As the song says " Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me".

With awareness and practice you can acquire increasing mastery over your own inner life, not being controlled by how others are behaving toward you. You start taking greater responsibility for your own happiness and peace, instead of depending on people and things outside of yourself to make you happy. This may not always be easy but it is the only path to inner peace, and peace in your relationships with others.

Sometimes pain or anger will still manage to surface despite your best intentions not to take things personally. Welcome to the human condition ! It is simply a signal that you have some more inner work to do before you are able to come from compassion in this situation. Every time you get triggered by another person's behavior is an opportunity to heal a charge that exists in your body/mind from past unresolved hurts. It is important not to beat yourself up for experiencing hurt and anger. It is equally important not to take your feelings out on others through blame and judgment.

The embodiment of compassion is the ability to keep your heart open to both yourself and others when painful feelings are triggered. The more we can learn to allow these feelings to pass through us without either self-blame or other-blame, the more freedom we will have over these feelings. We do not cling to them or push them away. We simply allow them to pass through us, all the while cultivating gentle lovingkindness toward ourselves and others in the process.

There is a famous teaching story about an empty boat that rams into your boat in the middle of the lake. While you probably wouldn't be angry at an empty boat, you might well become enraged if someone were at its helm. The point of the story is that the parents who did not validate you, the friend who betrayed you, the driver who tailgated you - are all in fact empty, rudderless boats. They were compulsively driven to act as they did by their own conditioning and unexamined wounds; therefore they did not know what they were doing and had little control over it. It is wise here to remember the words of Jesus as he was dying on the cross, "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do."

Just as an empty boat that rams into us is not targeting us, so too people who act unkindly are driven along by the unconscious force of their own wounding and pain. Until we realize this, we will remain prisoners of our past hurts and our grievances in the present, both of which keep us from opening our hearts to the compassion that is possible when we refuse to judge and blame. Not taking it personally when someone hurts us is a profound act of compassion, for ourselves first of all. We get to realize that there is nothing wrong with us even if we have been treated badly. Also we can learn to relax and let be in moments when our first impulse is fight or flight

Zen biology lesson for enlightenment

This video points out graphically the essence of my message about detaching from and observing the contents of the body/mind. We mistakenly believe that we are breathing, but actually we are being breathed automatically. We mistakenly believe that we are thinking, but actually our thoughts are also happening automatically based on our cultural and familial conditioning, our stories. We can stop believing all our thoughts and taking our small separated selves so seriously. We can become free of small mind and awaken to Big Heart. It is time for humanity to let go of trying to control reality and surrender to the guidance of Spirit, the one source and essence of all that is, which is beyond thought, beyond the body/mind.

How to Become Free of the Ego

The ego exists out of the experience that life is not the way it is supposed to be. The ego is constantly whispering and sometimes shouting “ This isn’t it !”. The ego is constantly moving away from the present moment, resisting the simple experience of being here now, unable to relax safely and peacefully with things exactly as they presently are. The ego cannot accept the “what is”. The ego cannot accept reality. The ego is by definition unhappy and long-suffering. Only acceptance and love bring happiness – acceptance of self, acceptance of others, acceptance of challenges, acceptance of life as it is.

The ego lives in a perpetual state of control and contraction, in a desperate attempt to make life be the way it thinks it should be. The ego contracts and separates by resisting reality. The very nature of the ego is stress – rejection of the way things are. Cultivating awareness and acceptance and responsibility for one’s own inner state is the path to be free of the ego.

In awareness you are watching this moment. You are a detached observer of the contents of awareness – feelings, thoughts, perceptions, sensations. In order to watch this moment, you have to let go of resistance and allow it to be as it is. You have to accept that everything is as it is, whether you like it or not. It is futile to fight with the nature of reality. Fighting with reality is the essence of suffering.

First you have to let go of trying to control, take a deep breath, then you can watch. Then what you are watching no longer defines you and limits you and causes you to suffer. You realize that you are bigger, vaster and more spacious that the contents of your awareness. You are awareness itself - vast, spacious and free. You eventually become deeply allowing of the way things are. You start embracing the limitations of the human condition, and you start experiencing your true nature as love itself. By accepting your human nature, you discover your oneness with your divine nature. Once you discover your oneness with your divine nature, instead of being the controller, the resister, you naturally become a co-creator with the universe of a more highly evolved world. You step into your true power as a channel for peace.

Life is a constant test of faith and surrender - faith that everything will be okay if you stop trying to control this moment. Surrender is required because the world you know is constantly falling out from beneath your feet. Change is constant and often unpredictable. Death happens, loss happens, conflict happens. Gradually and sometimes suddenly, the illusion of being able to turn this moment into something else ceases and you are simply left with this moment. You discover that it is safe to let go and just be. From this place of stillness and silence and surrender, wisdom comes from within about the right action to take in the face of whatever challenge you are facing.

Once you let go of that constant urge to move forward, to move away from this moment exactly as it is, there is only relaxed nonreactive awareness, which is intrinsically accepting and blissful. That is where true beauty shines – in the simple joy of being, not requiring anything to be different in order to be at peace. It is awareness and acceptance that bring personal growth and eventually bliss. Mature spirituality is the deep humble allowing of reality to be as it is.

If you are aware and awake and responsible for your own inner state of acceptance, instead of unconsciously resisting the nature of reality, then you are free and blissful. Then you can become a powerful co-creator with the divine of a world that works for everyone, where you can effectively contribute to building a new earth based on a higher level of consciousness – free of ego.

Reflections on Compassion

1. Compassion is defined as a state of being aware of the distress or suffering of others together with a desire to alleviate it.

2. Compassion and empathy are foundational for natural ethics and positive social relationships.

3. Cultivating compassion is the single most effective way to make oneself psychologically healthy, happy and joyful.

4. As each of us strives to cultivate compassion we should be wary of confusing genuine compassion with nice behavior motivated by the wish to be liked. Many of us have unconsciously taken on certain interpersonal roles in order to evoke positive responses from others.

5. Another common obstacle to compassion is not taking care of ourselves. We cannot give others what we don’t have ourselves. We must approach the task of inner development in a practical way by assessing how much we can give to others without feeling stressed out, overwhelmed or depleted.

6. Boundaries play an interesting and sometimes complicated role in developing compassion. We need to become skillful at knowing when to apply boundaries and when to relax or release them.

7. Setting healthy boundaries involves saying no when not refusing likely would lead us to feel stressed out, hurt, resentful or angry. Healthy boundaries work against the negative patterns of compulsively pleasing or rescuing others, and involves protecting and taking care of ourselves. Each of us has to judge our own capacities and set our boundaries accordingly.

8. We must have compassion for ourselves before we can have genuine compassion for others. To develop meaningful compassion for ourselves , we have to be willing and able to stay deeply present to our own suffering and its causes.

9. The main cause of human suffering is what the Buddhists call “attachment”, desiring things to be a certain way instead of the way they are, an inability to let go, relax and be with things as they are. With attachment the underlying energy is one of grasping at things or persons outside yourself to bring you happiness. With compassion the main energy is an allowing of the way things are in spite of the suffering involved and a warm affectionate wish for well-being.

Letting go of Control on the Way to Freedom

Imagine a high mountaintop with an eagle’s nest on top of a crag. Far below is a deep valley. In its nest lives a mother eagle with its baby. Each day the mother eagle goes off in search of food, and after awhile returns to the nest to feed her baby.

One day the mother doesn’t come back. As hours go by, alone and hungry, the baby becomes anxious. Still the mother eagle doesn’t return. The baby’s anxiety turns to fear. “Why hasn’t she returned? I’ll starve here all by myself. Has she forgotten me?”

Just as the baby is becoming really terrified, the mother finally returns – with a mouse in her beak. But she doesn’t alight in the nest and push the food into the baby’s mouth as she had always done before. Instead, she perches on the edge of the nest, just out of the baby’s reach. From her beak the mouse dangles invitingly. The baby’s hungry eyes fix upon it ; on wobbly legs, he lunges forward. The mother eagle suddenly flies up, just out of the baby’s reach. The baby finds himself standing on the edge of the nest as the mother circles around in the air.

The baby begins squawking and complaining, confused and angry that his mother could be so cruel. Doesn’t she know how hungry he is ? The mother swoops down close to the baby and he lunges again at the mouse dangling from her beak. Again, at the last moment, she glides out of his reach.

This time, the baby’s lunge causes him to topple over the edge of the nest and he begins to fall – down, down, down toward the valley below, squawking, crying, struggling. He is shocked that his mother could just let him drop like this. She had taken such good care of him all those weeks in the nest.

The mother eagle is circling above, but she does not interfere with the baby’s fall. Down, down the baby eagle drops, tumbling, squawking, screaming at his mother. The valley floor grows closer and closer. The baby becomes angrier and angrier with his mother. How could she do this to him?

Finally, anger turns to terror as the baby realizes he is probably going to die. He glances at the approaching valley floor. There is nothing to do but give in to his fate. At the last moment, he puts his head into the fall and surrenders. As he does this, his wings relax and spontaneously stretch out. Miraculously , he begins to glide. He is flying ! He is free !

His mother now swoops down beside him. Together they soar up and up, high above the valley floor. Then she begins to teach him how to ride the air currents and soar even higher.

Just as the baby bird had to surrender and relax into falling in order to be able to spontaneously fly, we have to surrender and relax into the pain of our human situation, in order to evolve into the next step of our evolutionary journey. In order to be able to choose the relaxation response (trusting the divine) instead of the “fight or flight” reactivity response ( being controlled by ego), in order to choose to come from compassion when people are behaving in ways we do not like, we need to be able to accept the way things are right now, to make peace with reality as it is presently unfolding. We need to see very clearly that things are the way they are whether we like it or not, so the wisest course of action is to accept things as they are( forgive), until we can collaboratively figure out a way to make things better for everybody through peaceful communication.

Stages of grieving: Stages of healing: Stages of letting go: Stages of making peace with reality: Stages of death and rebirth : Stages of evolution
1. Physical resistance: Denial, shock, minimizing, repressing “ I just can’t accept it .”
2. Mental resistance: Bargaining: If only…
3. Emotional resistance: Anger
4. The darkness before the dawn : Despair
5. Acceptance ; surrender; letting go; forgiving; allowing, softening and opening; release and relief from suffering
6. Rebirth – a new sense of self with greater freedom to navigate life wisely
7. New beginning – a new life based on the more highly evolved you
8. New challenges- new surrenders into ever deepe

Giving Yourself Empathy

Giving Yourself Empathy

Learning to give yourself empathy is an essential skill of spiritual intelligence and maturity. Others may not always be there for you while you process your pain, but you can always be there for yourself. The inner skill of self-empathy allows you to stay centered and balanced in stressful interpersonal conflict situations.

Whenever you find yourself triggered by someone’s behavior, stop to give yourself empathy. If you cannot do it on the spot, freeze frame the moment and give yourself some belated empathy later. Listen for your feelings and unmet needs.

Self-empathy requires us to stop and be fully present to our internal experience. The essence of empathy is non-verbal. It is not thinking about what we are feeling. It is feeling what we are feeling, and being open to allow whatever flood of sensations is present without either shrinking away from it, trying to change it, or going up to our heads with it.

Self-empathy is not a quick fix; it is a process which may take time, and when allowed to come to completion will lead to personal growth, to higher and better ways of being in life. The integration (digestion, processing) of negative emotions leads to wholeness.

Self-empathy is full presence and acceptance of whatever feelings exist without either pushing them away (denying) or hanging on to them (prolonging). Wallowing is not being present to our feelings, but consists of prolonged thinking about them or about the circumstances that triggered us. Each of us needs to experiment and discover the nature of PRESENCE, of being present to feelings as opposed to denying or indulging them.

There is a powerful psychological principle at work here :
What you resist ( reject, disown, deny, push away, repress, suppress) persists.
What you accept ( allow, receive, embrace, open to, soften around)
transforms.
Examples: Anger becomes backbone; grief becomes compassion; fear becomes sensitivity, etc.

Self empathy is an aspect of conscious suffering. Conscious suffering erodes the ego and allows more of the luminosity of our true original nature of unconditional love to shine through.

Introduction to Meditation

What meditation is:
• Meditation/relaxation is simply being.
• Meditation is surrendering to your present experience, letting your experience simply be, in a very deep way.
• Meditation is letting go of trying to control your experience so you can feel better, letting go of manipulation.
• Meditation is accepting and being aware of whatever is happening in the now moment - thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions.
• Meditation is a process of allowing even the deepest pain to be okay.
• When you allow everything to be as it is in the present moment, your experience of being the controller starts to relax.
• You start identifying less with being me and identifying more with simply being.
• Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it’s about letting go of control.
• The practice is to let go of the meditator, the controller, the ego, the manipulator, the seeker, the small separated sense of self.
• The meditator is the one who is trying to control experience, the escape artist who is trying to avoid pain and grasp at pleasure, the one who is trying to make something happen, the seeker, the one exerting effort.
• Awakening is going beyond the meditator, beyond the controller, beyond the manipulator, beyond the seeker.
• We cannot move beyond the false identity, the egoic identity, by trying to change. We move beyond it by accepting what is.
• When you start to let go of the meditator, the controller, the seeker, when you simply allow everything to be as it is, what you start to realize more and more deeply, is that the peace and stillness you are trying to attain, is already there.
• You can stop trying to attain bliss and simply relax into it, simply by allowing your experience to be as it is.
• Peace and stillness are totally natural states. Find out what happens when you give yourself to the peace that already is, to the stillness that already is.
• Meditation means being present. The more present you are, the more pleasure you feel. The more pleasure you feel, the more you automatically stay present to enjoy the pleasure. This is how meditation deepens, presence deepens.

What meditation can lead to:
• Spiritual awakening and enlightenment
• Waking up from the dream of separation to the truth of Oneness
• Profound self-acceptance and trust in the process of life
• The erosion of the ego
• Deep inner transformation
• Making peace with the past
• Unconditional joy
• Flowering of the heart
• Healed relationships

Why we meditate:
• To face and transform personal suffering
• To awaken to one’s true nature
• To experience oneness with the divine
• To have more ease, openness and relaxation in one’s life
• To live daily life in the same allowing way we meditate

Attitude and Posture:
• The two keys to deep relaxation and meditation are awareness and acceptance.
• It is preferable not to lie down for obvious reasons.
• Sitting in a particular position or on a meditation cushion is not the most important thing.
• Posture is meant to foster an inner sense of openness.
• Certain postures and hand positions actually open us emotionally and physically.
• The best position is an open posture with an erect spine and relaxed arms.
• What is most important is that you approach meditation with an underlying attitude of ease & openness & relaxation & simplicity.
• If you want to meditate with your eyes open, keep your eyes open. If you prefer them closed, close them.
• Effortless effort is needed to meditate. You need just enough effort to be present and aware, to be here now.
• Often just sitting in silence is enough- allowing what is, to be.

Techniques:
• Techniques and disciplines have been taught for hundreds and thousands of years, and certainly have some value and merit. However, they are various forms of control and eventually need to be let go of in order to be able to rest in simple being or presence.
• Some people follow their breath, some people say a mantra, some people do deep breathing, some people use visualization.
• These techniques are portals into presence , a means to an end, not an end in themselves.
• To engage these techniques at the beginning of a meditation session is fine. They are perfectly appropriate ways of bringing the mind into the present.
• Once your attention is in the present, then the invitation is to let go of these techniques and to start to relax into your natural state of being.
• The main focus of your attention should not be a technique but watching what happens when you allow everything to be as it is, when you allow yourself to let go of control.

Summary

When you let go of control and allow everything to be as it is – your natural tendency is to awaken. You are biologically, psychologically, spiritually designed to move toward awakening. When you let go of the control the ego has, the nature of your being is to awaken.

When you really start to let go, what needs to rise to the surface rises to the surface. What arises is, for the most part, unresolved conflict within you: emotions, sensations, and pains that you have never allowed yourself to fully feel. All of this arises in meditation. This unresolved material within you yearns to be experienced fully and will keep coming back until you do fully experience it.

You wake up to the reality of your being by relating with your human nature, embracing it fully, not by avoiding it. There is a strong tendency to constantly seek a way out of what you are feeling, to constantly resist pain and seek pleasure, to not accept yourself as you are. You try to control and manipulate anything that you think could cause you to feel things you do not wish to feel.

Until you can allow everything to be as it is, in the deepest possible way, in the most profound way, you are still involved in control. Awakening to oneness comes from letting go of control, from surrender.

You will not be able to get out of experiencing energetic or emotional pain. Personal suffering needs to be embraced. The process of embracing it dissolves the ego. At the root of all pain is the feeling that you are separate from everything else. It is what everyone feels at the core, yet everyone tries to avoid this feeling, this separateness, this aloneness, this emptiness, this longing. But it is in feeling this deep pain, or feeling whatever is there, that your heart opens and you experience your oneness with all that is.

Meditation is a practice that allows the awakening that wants to occur to occur. Three things are required: intention, effort and grace. Awakening is ultimately a gift of grace. The Oneness Blessing is a gift of grace, a spiritual energy that can greatly accelerate your process of awakening.

Joan Doyle
Oneness Facilitator
506-454-7500

True Self of Our Original Nature : Oneness with the Divine

The true Self of our original nature is that which is revealed when all striving ends.
Behind the conditioned habits of the ego - liking and disliking, grasping and fearing, striving and seeking; infinite love is waiting to shine.

This infinite love can be described as follows:
• A love that pays no attention to what kind of object is set before it
• A love that sees all things in the same light of perfection
• A love without end
• A love affair in which no otherness can be found, a love affair of the Self with Itself
• A love that is the vast spaciousness in which both suffering and joy, gain and loss, ill health and good health, conflict and harmony, birth and death, all occur
• A love which is the ground of being for all external experiences
• A love that is infinite, unconditioned, timeless, empty of content yet full, uncreated, unborn, undying

The Trance of Ego : The Illusion of Separation

The type of world you perceive depends in large measure on the state of consciousness you are in. Most of us live with a painful sense of separation from others, a sense of something missing, and a pervasive feeling of limitation, of fear and desire. As a result we engage in a whirlwind of activity to avoid the objects of our fear and to obtain the objects of our craving. The characteristics of living from a sense of separation include but are not limited to:
• Sense of lack. The very basis of the trance of ego is a pervasive and undefined sense of something missing. Enough is never enough. We always want more or better. We are never spiritual enough, skinny enough, smart enough, or young enough. We filter everything through this sense of lack. We are convinced, “ This isn’t it.”
• Sense of separation. Looking to the external world to fulfill our perceived lack keeps us focused on a “me-oriented” reality, reinforcing alienation and separation.
• Addiction. Both the feeling of lack and the craving to fill the void are so strong in us that we latch on to something external to “do it” for us. We escape from our inner emptiness into work, activities, sex, food, drink, drugs, the Internet, relationships or even to spiritual highs.
• Fear. If we decide our craving will be satisfied by money, we become gripped by the fear of poverty. If we believe the right relationship will alleviate our gnawing lack, then loneliness becomes a source of intense anxiety. If we think we will be happy in the right career, then fear of not making it devours us.
• Suspicion, strategic living, anxiety, hostile competition, self-doubt, disappointment, meaninglessness all characterize the trance of ego.
• Lack of fulfillment. We keep pinning our fulfillment on external things, but nothing outside us stays put. We are caught in the cycle of desire, hope and fear.

The trance of ego is the dominant state of consciousness on our planet. The way out of the trance is a perceptual transformation, a gift of grace in which we realize that separation is an illusion based on a faulty perception of reality. The Oneness Blessing gently awakens us from the trance of separation and alters our perception. The only way out of the dream of separation is to awaken – to become more and more aware of the trance and the grip it has on us and to let it go.

The process of awakening involves facing our personal suffering, accepting our human condition completely, and paradoxically discovering our oneness with divinity by embracing our flawed humanity, instead of resisting it and trying to escape from it. It is in embracing our humanity, feeling fully into it without resistance, staying present to the even the deepest pain and letting go of control, that we discover the truth that our humanity and our divinity are not two, but one.

What is the Oneness Blessing ?

The Oneness Blessing, known as deeksha in India where it originates, is one way that the Divine is reaching out to mankind at this critical time in man’s evolution. It is a special gift of grace that accelerates the process of awakening from the dream of separation into the reality of Oneness.

Oneness Blessing
• The Oneness Blessing is an act of energy transfer from a Oneness Facilitator to a recipient either by touch or by the power of intention. The blessing is generally given by the Blessing giver placing their hands on the recipient’s head for 30 seconds to several minutes. It can also be given just through the power of intention, allowing many people to receive it at the same time.
• The Oneness Blessing is a non-denominational experience that transfers physical energy, awakening our connection with the oneness in everything, allowing each of us to deepen our relationship with those we love, with ourselves, with strangers and with our creator.
• The Oneness Blessing initiates a neuro-biological change in the brain. There are 16 centres in the brain responsible for definitive experiences like sensory perception, emotions of jealousy, hatred, fear, compassion, love, joy, separation, connectedness, creativity, learning, etc. Oneness Blessing results in the activation of certain centres and the de-activation of certain other centres thus bringing about a shift in the perception and experience of life.
• The Oneness Blessing is also found to help in the healing of the body and in the discharge of repetitive emotional patterns, resulting in greater ease and comfort with oneself.
• In relationships it enables a greater sensitivity and connectedness with the other, freeing you from the limitations of your judgments and conditionings.
• Success and prosperity begins with consciousness – a capacity to expand your horizon of thinking and an understanding of the universe around you, the principles governing you.

Why Oneness Blessing?
Opens the doors of consciousness
Awakens Intelligence
Enhances memory retention
Increases ability to learn
Takes you into alpha
Creates better hemispheric synchronization
Brings love to relationships
Heals hurts
Increases listening
Helps experience the other
Awakens compassion
Instills affection
Infuses vitality
Heals the body by healing the mind
Improves metabolic activity
Relaxes the body
Helps build love and appreciation for the body
Invokes auspicious energies
Creates a prosperity consciousness
Removes blocks that hinder success
Makes possible a mental frame for abundance

Awakening into oneness

Awakening into oneness is awakening from the illusion of separation, the trance of ego, the dream of the person you have mistaken yourself to be. It is about coming to know who you really are prior to the conditioned habits of identifying with the contents of your awareness – thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. It is a process of accessing your deepest nature as awareness itself - peaceful, limitless, free, unchanging, vast spaciousness, also called love; and learning to embody this true nature into the fabric of your daily life. Thoughts, fears, and desires still come and go; life is still characterized by temporary trials, misfortunes, and stress. But the personal story is no longer characterized by rigid separation; it is now capable of reflecting something deeper, more luminous and abiding that can shine through it.

Awakening into oneness is about discovering that you are not primarily a human being having occasional spiritual experiences. You discover that you are primarily a spiritual being, the ONE, having a human experience. The truth is you already are what you are seeking. You are looking for God through his/her eyes. Awakening into oneness is coming to realize this with your whole being and learning to live it ever more fully. It is not awakening itself but the permeation of that wakefulness into all the dimensions of ordinary life that seems to be challenging. Awakening can continually deepen and become more stable in your life. The Oneness Blessing is a gift of grace that accelerates this process.

Awakening is a radical shift in identity. You think you’re you, but you’re not. You are eternal being. We each have a specific role and our stories about that role. But our roles and stories are not what we are. It is actually astounding how completely we humans define ourselves by the content of our minds, feelings and history. The Oneness Blessing frees us from this false identification. The core suffering we experience as human beings comes from the ego knot, the illusion that we are separate from God and from each other. This illusion creates an incessant urge to search for something external to escape the pain and discontent of this condition.

The revelation of the truth of your oneness with the divine comes through divine grace, rather than through any individual effort. Awakening into oneness is not the fruit of a long process of striving, but the cessation, temporarily or permanently, of the attempt to become something other than what already is. It is the abandonment of effort and the surrender to divine grace. This allows a deep relaxation into the present moment, where the joy of being resides.

The heart’s one true longing is to come home, to rest in peace, silence, love – and to realize the perfection always and already inherent within this and every moment. Only by awakening from the dream of separation can our hearts flower, soften and open, relaxing into an embodied open presence that feels utterly safe and authentic.

Although awakening marks the end of striving and confusion, it is the beginning of another journey, in some ways more demanding – the process of embodying the formless in the world of form. It will take the rest of one’s life to fully integrate and embody the love that we are. Once awareness has turned around and realized its original nature as the ONE, this original nature begins to permeate every dimension of our humanity. The process is endless, because the individual can always more fully reflect its source.

Life is a demonstration of the source trying again and again to incarnate itself with more beauty and completeness. Now we are witnessing the democratization of this process, in which the permeation occurs through mutuality and friendship, rather than through hierarchy and organization. In the past few years there has been a dramatic increase in the ease with which awakening can occur. The time for humanity to awaken into oneness is now. The Oneness Movement is an outward sign of this invisible reality.

Music to quiet the mind and open the heart

The awakening heart blog is born

With thanks to my son, John Green.

Moola Mantra

Seekers of time and again have sought the meaning of the meaning of the moola mantra. Bhagavan please explain.

The ultimate thing of the universe is what you call Brahman, which has 3 qualities, sat - chit - ananda. Its sense of existence is what is called sat, its conscious intelligence is chit, and its nature is ananda which is bliss. That is why it is normally qualified as sat chit ananda parabrahma. God or Ishvara is imminent in Brahman. God is power, compassion and love. That is why they refer to God as satchitananda parabrahma.

God relates to humans as though God were a human. Hence you call God, Purushothama, as God also manifests in the individual as the antaryamin or the higher sacred self, since the antaryamin is in everyone, it is called the paramatma. The paramatma manifests as Bhagavati and Bhagavan, through Amma and myself.
Ananda Giriji’s explanation:

The Moola Mantra describes the totality of God in God’s different aspects.
Sat chit ananda : Sat-existence, chit-consciousness, ananda- bliss.
God as consciousness has qualities such as: intelligence, friendship, love, humor (although many of us tend to believe God can never smile.) We have been strongly conditioned to think of powerful male on a throne counting our sins. Bhagavan commented about being “Afraid of God”. It is an error to say we are separate from God & an error to say we are the same as God. We are twins. Like cells in body, being one with body, but different from the body. Ultimate freedom is when you realize there are no TWO. Realize oneness with all beings. It’s the mind that divides you & me, you & God, you & matter - division at all levels.
If man & God are twins of same reality, how can there be any judgment? Even mortals like us, when our heart have flowered, when we are awakened, we can no longer say good & bad. Judgment is a quality of the mind. We speak of God as consciousness = intelligence, love, humor, peace, stillness. We can never say, ”This is God & this alone is God.” If there are 6 billion people, God is experienced in 6 billion different ways. If I say what I experienced is the True God, we are making a mistake. Cosmic Reality is ONE & the Divine is perceived in many ways. God is existence, is consciousness, with innumerable qualities. God is Bliss. Bliss that is eminent in every part of creation. There is no need for a reason to be happy. If you experience ANYTHING, the chair you sit on, the sight in front of your eyes. ANYTHING, when totally experienced is Bliss. That is the nature of this creation. That is God’s nature – eminent. We don’t experience bliss because we don’t see things as they are. Mind evaluates, interprets, processes anything it sees or touches. We see good or bad man, man who could have been better, etc., but we do not see man out there. All mind knows is to interpret & evaluate. But if for a moment there is no interpretation of what is before you, if mind not processing what it experiences, it is joy. Holding a pen in your hand, the sensation of that is joy. God is Ananda, Bliss. Eminent everywhere. That’s why when we see things as they are, we see God; when we hear things as they are, we are hearing God. It could be an angry man, shouting, if we heard it without labeling it, processing it, evaluating it, you are hearing God. It’s an extraordinary moment.
Sat chit ananda Parabrahma

This God who is existence, consciousness, bliss, Supreme Omnipresence, who is intelligence, love, and joy is eminent in everything & we can perceive this God everywhere. Like a carpenter that can be found in the chair he has made, this chair I sit in. He might be dead & gone now; when he assembled pieces of wood together, crafted it, planned it, you can see his thoughtfulness there, his intelligence there, his skills. Similarly, as we experience carpenter & chair, you can see & experience God in this body, in this breath, in this building, in the people around you, in his whole creation. While God is both as previously stated, yet, while we can perceive this God, it is so difficult to perceive this God as consciousness, intelligence.
When God becomes more visible, when perceived as Entity, God is Puroshothama, the essence of Being, the Primordial Being. God is in the sea, the sand, sun, water. But we can’t relate to him there. We can’t pray to the sand, water, etc. When this God is perceivable as a human being, we can pray, and hug him like a mother or father. When God becomes perceivable as a human being we call God.

Puroshothama Paramatma
When this Primordial Being, this Spirit, manifests in your heart, awakening in your spiritual heart, when you can close your eyes & know God in your heart as the Indweller, when you hear God in your heart as a Voice & feel it in your heart, when God becomes your Indweller, we call him the Paramatma. Same God, different aspects. This God has become so personal to you that you can see, hear, etc. in your heart – Paramatma.

Sri Bhagavathi Sametha, Sri Bhagavathe Namaha
This God, Supreme, Omnipresent, Eminent in all creation, this God, the Primordial Spirit, this God, who is your Indweller, this God can manifest on this planet, can incarnate in this world just like you & me embodied in a human body, both as man & woman, as the Mother & the Father.
Bhagavathi, the feminine aspect of God;
Bhagavathe, the masculine aspect of God. Together as both man & woman, masculine & feminine, God incarnates. You can relate to God in any of these names, these faces. You can say to this God, “I surrender myself, to this God I give myself.”

In Indian tradition, we refer to God as Baktha Paradinha. It means, “One who is dependent on the devotee.” He has no independent existence as this or that. His existence is dependent on how we perceive God – Mother, Inner Voice, Formless Presence, that’s how you will experience God. If perceived as half man & half beast, that’s how you will experience & perceive God. If as a friend, he will play games with you. If perceived as your partner & spouse, he will become your Spouse.
God is whoever you want him to be. And he is in every relationship profoundly…… There are many saints in India. For example, St. Mirabai renounced her husband & married Lord Krishna, finally merging into & disappearing into Lord Krishna.
Also Inductakari, One Who Does As Bidden. A Relationship with God then as your Father/Mother, Friend, Spouse, or Teacher. The One Who Does As Bidden. You decide & God follows. That is how much he loves you. Recognizing this totality of God, surrendering to this God. That is the meaning of this mantra.

While God is Heavenly Father, Primordial Spirit, you also need to give him a place in your home, relate to him. That’s how to know him more & more. This is a change in history, God becoming more & more personal. For a long time in the past God was not so personal. For the 1st time with Jesus, Jesus called God, “My Father.” You can’t keep God 'somewhere out there'. The Golden Age is when man can walk & talk with God. If our lives should become very meaningful, it is necessary we discover our personal God. Not that there are many Gods. There are no twos in the first place. God is One. Reality is One. You need to know God personally. Open your minds, drop all of your frightening ideas of God. You should open your hearts, then you‘ll see how humorous God is. He can dine with you, scold you, throw tantrums, (I’m not kidding). That is the relationship we need. That is the Golden Age.

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Definitions:
Om: Om has 100 different meanings. It is said 'In the beginning was the Supreme word and the word created every thing. That word is Om'. If you are meditating in silence deeply, you can hear the sound Om within. The whole creation emerged from the sound Om. It is the primordial sound or the Universal sound by which the whole universe vibrates. Om also means inviting the higher energy. This divine sound has the power to create, sustain and destroy, giving life and movement to all that exist.
Sat Chit Ananda
Sat: The all penetrating existence that is formless, shapeless, omnipresent, attribute less, and quality less aspect of the Universe. It is the Un manifest. It is experienced as emptiness of the Universe. We could say it is the body of the Universe that is static. Every thing that has a form and that can be sensed, evolved out of this Un manifest. It is so subtle that it is beyond all perceptions. It can only be seen when it has become gross and has taken form. We are in the Universe and the Universe is in us. We are the effect and Universe is the cause and the cause manifests itself as the effect.
Chit: The Pure Consciousness of the Universe that is infinite, omni-present manifesting power of the Universe. Out of this is evolved everything that we call Dynamic energy or force. It can manifest in any form or shape. It is the consciousness manifesting as motion, as gravitation, as magnetism, etc. It is also manifesting as the actions of the body, as thought force. It is the Supreme Spirit.
Ananda: Bliss, love and friendship nature of the Universe. When you experience either the Supreme Energy in this Creation (Sat) and become one with the Existence or experience the aspect of Pure Consciousness (Chit), you enter into a state of Divine Bliss and eternal happiness (Ananda). This is the primordial characteristic of the Universe, which is the greatest and most profound state of ecstasy that you can ever experience when you relate with your higher Consciousness.
Parabrahma: The Supreme Being in his Absolute aspect; one who is beyond space and time. It is the essence of the Universe that is with form and without form. It is the Supreme creator.
Purushothama: This has different meanings. Purusha means soul and Uthama means the supreme, the Supreme spirit. It also means the supreme energy of force guiding us from the highest world. Purusha also means Man, and Purushothama is the energy that incarnates as an Avatar to help and guide Mankind and relate closely to the beloved Creation.
Paramatma: The supreme inner energy that is immanent in every creature and in all beings, living and non-living. It's the indweller or the Antaryamin who resides formless or in any form desired. It's the force that can come to you whenever you want and wherever you want to guide and help you.
Sri Bhagavthi: The female aspect, which is characterized as the Supreme Intelligence in action, the Power (The Shakti). It is referred to the Mother Earth (Divine Mother) aspect of the creation.
Sametha: Together or in communion with.
Sri Bhagavathe: The Male aspect of the Creation, which is unchangeable and permanent.
Namaha: Salutations or prostrations to the Universe that is Om and also has the qualities of Sat Chit Ananda, that is omnipresent, unchangeable and changeable at the same time, the supreme spirit in a human form and formless, the indweller that can guide and help in the feminine and masculine forms with the supreme intelligence. I seek your presence and guidance all the time.